Twitter loses payroll dept, other financial employees from mass resignation | Hacker News Reader

Twitter loses payroll dept, other financial employees from mass resignation

businessinsider.com

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I'm sure Musk is going to be left with an extremely motivated workforce.

Seriously, people should just work whatever hours they want now (or don't want), look for other jobs, until they get caught.

It's always the same with the bean counters, you can measure cost, salaries, etc, but you can't really measure happiness and motivation (well perhaps with surveys). In the end you are perhaps left with lower cost, fewer people, but these people are not motivated to to anything or do anything well.

I wanted to believe that Elon had a plan. I now believe he has not the faintest idea about how to run a software company.

And maybe that's a US problem... I see the same with construction and service workers, nobody has pride in their work left, just doing the minimum, hoping to get away with it... because their leaders are telling them that cost is all that matters.

Musk never had plans. He's just a fraudster and lunatic comedian with loads of money. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1zPeWaaCZHqfq0tnkPwc6...

I work for an unrelated US company and if our boss would ask my team to go hardcore and push a new feature out of the door and he can explain why that's necessary, I'd expect more than half of my team to participate.

There are people who are proud of doing good work. It's just that they probably were the minority at Twitter. I'd guess that scaring out everyone who's feeling lazy might turn out to be a great way to increase productivity.

What if you CAN'T just "go hardcore" at the drop of a hat because some jackass asks you to? What if you have a family to take care of? Or your own health? You sign on at a company for a solid 9-5 week with the expectation that there's going to be little, if any overtime, and that overtime would be on rare exceptions.

Then some jackass takes everything over and tells you to work twice as much or GTFO.

No dude, that's not "doing the minimum" or "being lazy" that's a drastic change. I don't think he should have gotten away with doing what he's doing.

I am very fucking proud of doing great work. I will even pull a few long days as needed to make something close or solve an issue. I'm not going to work 80 hour weeks. In fact, I think it's unethical to work those kind of hours - at some point you're going to ruin your long term health, the wellbeing of your family, and the quality of the work you produce. It's just all around foolish.

It’s a different company with the same name, the old Twitter no longer exists. Along with that comes a new set of expectations. There’s nothing he’s “getting away with”, he bought the company so he makes the rules. The moral judgement is of course up to you.

> I work for an unrelated US company and if our boss would ask my team to go hardcore and push a new feature out of the door and he can explain why that's necessary, I'd expect more than half of my team to participate.

Musk made no effort to explain any real reason that "going hardcore" was needed, and certainly didn't suggest any real feature that needed it.

There's a difference between pulling together to work hard and achieve goals with people you trust and whatever Musk has done.

Some asshole telling you you're shit, for months, firing all of your friends and then asking everyone to work themselves to death to help pay off his unneeded loan interest is not going to get really anyone motivated.

The company has been a giant money furnace for the entirety of its existence... I wouldn't expect Must to have to reiterate that to the people working there.

It isn't selecting for people who aren't lazy, it's selecting for people who have no other options, which doesn't seem like the best way to attract talent.

If you were told you would have to work many more hours with fewer benefits for the same pay, but you had the option of going somewhere else for comparable pay, an actual ability to see your friends/family, and WFH/free meals/whatever, are you telling me that you would stay and take the worse working conditions just out of loyalty to a company that has no real loyalty to you and only employs you based off of an arbitrary metric?

Given the choice, of course you're going to take the option with reasonable working conditions and flexibility for the same pay.

The people they are retaining are largely going to be staying because they don't have that option.

Quite a few seem to have visas dependent on their employment and social circles they don't want to leave and some are scared that they won't be able to convince another employer of their value in today's tech climate where everyone is laying off.

That may be true for an outsourced team of "yes men" but I would imagine the talent at Twitter has more self-respect than that.

If the boss asks me to perform "office heroics", I will want to know what for. When I was younger I could power through that, while the stress would be absorbed by alcohol and my liver. Many people are too experienced and too tired of that crap. This has the vibe of an early tech company run by hard-partyng bros. Go time! Tequila and code!

I don't know how it is at manufacturing and engineering companies like Tesla/SpaceX, but in the software business I've learned one thing - if you don't have respect for your engineers and you don't trust them, treating them like "resources", don't be in this business at all.

Personally, nothing makes me more proud of doing good work than knowing the entire payroll department left/was laid off and I have no clue if I'm going to actually get paid. If my boss told me to go hardcore without pay, I'd happily just do whatever he asked because hard work is valuable.

This is my read as well - judging by the amount of tantrum being thrown, the place seems to have a corporate culture of some progressive nonprofit... which is likely why they haven't been able to, ya know, make money.

Didn't someone else do this approach before - essentially offering people money to quit?

It's almost like Twitter is just a bunch of socialist snowflakes, borderline welfare queens who start drinking wine at 11 and work noon to four.

What does that even mean? Try running a site at this scale with this track record and see if you can "coast".

Maybe don't blame the engineers but the spectacularly bad management.

If you can't run payroll, you'll definitely end up with only the truly committed.

Thank you people for leaving this toxic place. This is the only way to teach the companies and idiot CEOs that this will not be tolerated. This helps every worker down the line.

All Musk did was tell his employees that they are expected to work and work hard. That the culture of doing as little work as possible had ended because it was killing the company - a fair point considering Twitter was bleeding money and only had 2 profitable years in the last 10. The other eight saw losses of 500MM to 1.1BN. Twitter was already on the edge financially and even a layman could see the entire company needed to change.

Musk telegraphed his intention to cut most of the workforce so this shouldn't be a surprise. His acquisition is playing out exactly like others. He will push and press until he finds the people worth keeping or are on-board with his vision and then fill gaps going forward. There are no shortage of people who do not share the smoothie-guzzling work-ethic of former twitter employees.

Twitter has always been a toxic place. What else do you call an organization whose only output for the last 10 years were billion dollar write downs and global censorship? To say nothing of the trolls, spam, bots, and astroturfing. Where ping-pong is valued more than production, and employees take 2 hour post-lunch "relaxation" breaks in the middle of the day, a mere hour before they go home.

Taking the CEO's suggestion of leaving if you weren't onboard with his vision is not sending a message. It is taking the CEO's suggestion of working someplace else. I'm sure in today's competitive environment, CEO's are climbing over themselves to pay $150k to $250k year to someone who does only 2 to 4 hours of real work per day.

I can see Musk moving the company HQ to some other place where talent pools have a different perspective on work and work ethic. My bets are Raleigh, NC or Austin, TX.

> CEO's are climbing over themselves to pay $150k to $250k year to someone who does only 2 to 4 hours of real work per day.

Some or many of the resigned or fired Twitter engineers will be able to find work at over $250k per year, actually. That should be easy for anyone at the initial senior level.

For that matter $150k is doable even for a mid level engineer at a mid-tier non-faang "boring" company these days.

You sound out of touch with the US software labor market of today.

I think you're reading a lot of what you want into that "Twitter 2.0" email.

I mean, we're all reading into that email to some degree, but it struck me as all stick and no carrot.

> ... we will need to be extremely hardcore. This will mean working long hours at high intensity.

> Anyone who has not [replied 'yes'] by 5pm ET tomorrow (Thursday) will receive three months of severance.

I think Musk is immensely talented and a great motivator.

But not in this instance.

I think he knows he's screwed up badly, but he reminds me of an angst ridden high schooler who is in trouble, but who is trying to walk the fine line of getting himself OUT OF trouble while still saving face in front of his friends by acting cool ("yeah, I just vaporized $44 billion. I'm cool with that. <blithely glances at his fingernails.> EVERYONE GET DOWN TO MY OFFICE WITH YOUR CODE AND PLEASE STAY IF YOU'RE ESSENTIAL")

You know what would have been a message than the first one above?

"... we will need to be extremely hardcore. This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Those who can rise to the challenge will be handsomely compensated and you will have my undying gratitude."

See? A little carrot thrown in with the stick.

> be part of a voluntary layoff and would receive three months of pay as severance

That is very generous severance. No wonder so many people resigned.

Well, the alternative is to work whatever hours He wants you to or get fired anyway. Not sure if 0 or 3 months would matter to me, but with 3 offered, yes, run!

Well honestly if the severance was 0 (which would be illegal but whatever) then why would you quit? Instead you could just work the hours you want until it caught up and you got fired.

Companies don't need to offer severance in the US, unless there's an employment agreement that specifies it.

They don't need to offer severance, but they do (in many cases) have to offer a minimum 60 days notice of lay off. The initial wave of layoffs offered at least 60 days severance in lieu of notice. How this "love it or leave it" ploy works I'm not sure, but since there is severance, it probably doesn't matter.

The question now is, with no one in payroll department, will people laid off with a promised amount of severance pay ever see it?

The Federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act or WARN Act, offers protection to workers, their families and communities by requiring employers (with 100 or more full-time workers) to provide written notice 60 days in advance of plant closings, mass layoffs and/or sale of a business.

He's offering 3 months to avoid violating the WARN act - so while severance is not required, following WARN is.

Yeah, it's probably 60 days of not-working at Twitter, plus an actual severance payout.

Without a payroll or tax team it's probably none of that.

Even in California? (Series question I’m too lazy to Google)

Even in California.

https://edd.ca.gov/en/Jobs_and_Training/Layoff_Services_WARN

That law says they have to be notified, it doesn't mention anything about severance.

If you get fired after clicking Yes but then refusing to do the work, would you still get the severance? I am thinking not?

What is mentioned too little as well; what is the upside of clicking yes? Is this a trophy? I am not American and trophies mean nothing at all to me even though i have a few: i like things i can use irl. So if click yes, is this going to do anything outside making Musk richer?

Would being fired in that way affect your ability to collect unemployment?

Seriously. If I had an asshat boss and he asked me to either "be hardcore" or get 3 months severance..the week before Thanksgiving.

I'd say "Happy Holidays" and fuck off right quick lmaoo.

I think it's actually two months (for legal reasons) of being an employee but not being allowed to work at twitter, followed by one month of severance, under conditions to be determined

Well, will they receive their severance... if they have a payroll department of zero people?

Legal requirement, at least in California.

Layoffs have to be announced three months in advance. If you want people gone immediately you have to still pay them those three months.

Not generous, the bare legal minimum.

It’s a legal requirement in a few states. It’s easier to do that than deal with more lawsuits.

By not paying payroll and US taxes, Twitter will instantaneously become profitable!

...briefly. :-O

Payroll and Taxes aren't "Hardcore"

Accountants: a group a people famous for seeking out risky, exciting and tumultuous work environments.

I don't understand why the payroll and accounting teams would have got the hardcore memo. Surely their jobs will be basically the same or easier (fewer people). I don't know the subject area, but how could this amount of work really change based on engineering direction?

There’s no business reason behind it. I saw this happen on a much smaller scale at Amazon, management trying to inject “start-up culture” into a profession that doesn’t need or want it.

Accountants specifically work for companies like Twitter to avoid this sort of environment.

They probably just don't want to work there.

If you reduce overall employees by half, it kinda makes sense to also halve the HR and payroll departments...

"there are likely fewer than 2,000 employees left at the company."

To me, that still seem like an unnecessarily large team. WhatsApp had only 55 employees when they got acquired.

WhatsApp is a very simple application. I don't want to minimize what they did, because good interface design is hard to do, but it's just an instant messaging and voip client. You can message a maximum of 512 people on whatsapp. Barack Obama can message 133.3 million on twitter.

These technical challenges aren't even on the same planet.

At the time of acquisition WhatsApp had a group size limit of 100 people.

It also did not yet have:

- Document sharing

- Voice / video calls

- End-to-end encryption

- Read receipts

- WhatsApp Web

Still an impressive piece of engineering, but definitely a completely different beast.

Won't that prevent Twitter from paying severance to their former employees?

There are contractors that can come in and do this kind of work on short notice

Yes, but who is left to onboard and train the contractors?

>> Yes, but who is left to onboard and train the contractors?

To do payroll!? You must mean something else, right?

Payroll can get complicated, especially when companies allow direct deducts for stock, perks, etc.

“The fish rots from the head back.”

"No safety or surprise, the end" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXqPNlng6uI

Don't they outsource everything to ADP like every other normal F500 company?

This is starting to feel like a bunch of butthurt coming from low value add teams.

Think of accountants like an IT department. They’re both zero value add to most people until something breaks or c-level ignores their input.

Elon, is that you?

Payroll is a "low value add team"? I can see you've never dealt with ADP or their competitors.

With only 2000 workers, just call Paychex.

We switched to ADP at my previous employer (of around 150 people) - wasn't difficult and they offloaded a ton of work from the two people we had running corp finance.

There are obvious economies of scales in farming that out, especially for place like Twitter that's just burning cash.

So maybe "to twitter" will become a verb in the English language meaning "to destroy something by incompetence." Example: "Hey Bob! Don't touch my scope mirror! I don't want you twittering it."

add it to https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Twitter

Why would Twitter have a payroll department? I doubt the headline but good riddance if so. Everyone, but everyone, outsources payroll.

The job has also become much easier with equity being converted to cash.

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